DEDICATIONS BY THE SHOVEL TO THE WIND, BY GEORGES SEBBAG

par Georges Sebbag

May 3, 2020

Henri Béhar's work catalogs the dedications that André Breton has affixed and signed at the head of his books and that he has addressed to his close ones and friends, to writers and artists, to literary critics or collectors. It also brings together the autograph dedications that numerous authors have addressed to André Breton. When dedications are reciprocal, we sometimes witness a ping-pong game, or else a potlatch ceremony is celebrated there, as Henri Béhar affirms, a qualification to which we will return. The fishing for A.S.D. (Autograph Signed Dedications) has been fruitful. Among the 1,750 volumes that circulated between Breton and some 448 people, we must retain the figure of 700 copies dedicated by André Breton alone. This repertoire of dedications is established notably from the 2003 sale catalog of the library of 42, rue Fontaine as well as from various bookseller or public sale catalogs, where Breton's dedications and other celebrities are increasingly monetized.

The book is pleasant to leaf through: the paper is solid, the layout clear, the format substantial, the dedications are correctly reproduced. We can already make the hypothesis that a future edition, which would cast an even wider net, would easily reach 1,000 pages or more. This profusion of dedications in the literary trade is not new. But it reaches a peak among the surrealists who have known how to put into practice a collagist spirit, on the formal level (exquisite corpse, for example), on the passionate terrain (formation of duos, trios, quartets within the group) and in the temporal domain (objective chance, coagulation of automatic durations). Overall, one cannot help but admire the poetic and lyrical expression of Breton's dedications, while in the other direction, many deferential dedications border on the conventional.

The first lesson from this mass of dedications comes from certain exchanges, which break with the legend of a Breton maniac of exclusion. Without even calling on their epistolary exchanges, we discover that after 1945, André Breton's relations with Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris or Roger Caillois are at their best. The thurifers of these last three authors who for decades have painted the picture of a perpetual war between their protégé and the surrealist Breton will have their expenses. First sample: "to Georges Bataille, one of the few men for whom life has been worth knowing for me. André Breton" (Arcane 17, 1947); "To André Breton, with whom I have never ceased to be deeply united beyond easy friendships." (The Tears of Eros, 1961). Second sample: "To André Breton, this book which is rightfully his with the friendship of Michel Leiris." (Nights without Night, and Some Days without Day, 1961). Third sample: "To Roger Caillois / – apart from our divergences / To my eyes little thing / in high esteem / and affection / André Breton" (Surrealist Manifestos, 1955); "For André Breton this book where he is often cited with the faithful friendship of R. Caillois" (Art poétique, 1958). If there are exclusives with Breton, they are rather rare; they concern Aragon after 1932 and Éluard after 1945. Regarding the latter, Béhar has rightly reproduced a list intended for a bookseller written by Breton one month after the death of his former friend. This list detailed twenty-three books offered by Éluard until 1938, most often limited editions with dedications more miraculous than the others.

Second lesson: if Breton's dedications, which often have a triple function (poetic expression, evocation of the work and inclusion of the recipient), can inform us about the surrealist geste, they are very far from equaling the letters where Breton can deploy at will his desires, his emotions, his ideas and his talent; it is rare that one can detect there a frankly unexpected statement or confession.

Third lesson. Let us recall that, on March 11, 1928, Breton flies to Ajaccio, where he hopes to surprise Suzanne Muzard who is then with Emmanuel Berl; to justify his visit, he asks Suzanne to authorize him to dedicate Nadja to her which will soon appear. If we focus on the dedications of entire volumes, let us specify that "The Magnetic Fields are dedicated to the memory of Jacques Vaché" by Breton and Soupault, that Earthlight is dedicated "To the great poet / SAINT-POL-ROUX / To those who like him / offer themselves / THE MAGNIFICENT / pleasure of being forgotten", that Slow Down Works is dedicated by Breton, Char and Éluard "To Benjamin Péret" and that The White-Haired Revolver is dedicated "To Paul Éluard". It is important to understand the radical difference between printed and publicized dedications and autograph dedications for private use. It is surprising that Henri Béhar is not attacked to the question of dedications whose public offering and strategic role allow better understanding of the problem of dedications which, for their part, are only brought to our knowledge occasionally and belatedly. For Breton was concerned very early with the question of dedications. On December 29, 1920, he notes this in his Notebook: "B. Péret dedicates a poem to me: Memento. I have been thus dedicated: Reverdy Near the road and the bridge, Soupault I lie, Tzara Galvanized nobility, Picabia Dada philosopher, Éluard Simple remarks and Influences, Paulhan The Bad clock and the first version of The Severe Healing, Pansaers a poem, Ungaretti a poem. That must be all. Aragon will not dedicate Anicet to me although Soupault asked him to." The exchange of dedications is particularly widespread among the Dada-surrealists. We must not only see there a quid pro quo. The circulation of names in the works of one and the other only continues the practice operated by Breton in his collection Mont de piété. These borrowings and mutual recognitions, like plural writing or collective action, are typical manifestations of surrealist collagism. There is a whole game of dedications between the Dada-surrealists named Breton, Aragon and Drieu but also between the old friends Berl and Drieu who, from February to July 1927, will write together a series of notebooks entitled The Last Days. The game of dedications testifies to all sorts of nourished exchanges. In May 1922, André Breton publishes in Littérature "The Year of Red Hats", which he dedicates to Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. This long and beautiful text will be taken up at the end of Soluble Fish. In 1924, it is Aragon's turn to dedicate his work Le Libertinage to Drieu. In 1925, Drieu returns the favor by dedicating The Man Covered with Women to him. 1927 is a pivotal year. Drieu dedicates to André Breton "The Policeman", a short story from The Suite in Ideas and the important essay entitled The Young European, where the author, sensitive to decadence and allergic to nations, calls for the creation of the United States of Europe. A phrase from The Paris Peasant serves as an epigraph to the second part of The Young European. For his part, Berl dedicates his novel Route No. 10 to Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. In 1928, Drieu dedicates Geneva or Moscow to Emmanuel Berl, while Breton, who would have wished to dedicate Nadja to Suzanne Muzard, renounces it. In 1929, Berl's new friend and associate being called Malraux, it is to him that the favors of the dedication of Death of Bourgeois Thought will go. In 1930, Berl conceives his dedication of Death of Bourgeois Morality thus: "To my wife, to my uncles, to my aunts, to my cousins, to my female cousins." Suzanne Berl-Muzard now belongs to the family. The following year, he mischievously repeats on the occasion of his essay The Bourgeois and Love: "To Suzanne, for Suzanne". But this time behind his wife Suzanne, a second, even a third Suzanne, seem to loom.

Fourth lesson. In 1931, Breton publishes without author's name the poem Free Union, which exalts all parts of Suzanne Muzard's body 1. It seems particularly futile to us to affirm that the "woman" of Free Union is purely imaginary. Under the pretext that Breton has subsequently dedicated Free Union to Marcelle Ferry then to Élisa Breton, José Pierre does not hesitate to conclude that Suzanne Muzard is not the inspirer of the poem but that Free Union is "a homage to woman in general 2." It is surprising that Henri Béhar follows in his footsteps. In the first dedication, Breton proclaims that Marcelle has become his mistress, his wife: "To Marcelle, / my wife here predicted, / FREE UNION / freedom continuing to be / only the knowledge of necessity / André Breton". In the second dedication, André justifies as he can, by Élisa's trip to France in 1931, the fact that the Chilean will become his wife, his woman: "'My wife with the hair...' / it was therefore you / my love / as true as I did not give her / then any face / and that in this beginning of 1931 / you were coming to France / for the first time / André" (Poems, 1948). When he dedicates Free Union around 1933 and around 1948 to two loved women, he does not intend to destroy the love he had for Suzanne Muzard. On the contrary, this previous love serves as a springboard for him. As for the denial of Suzanne's face, it is a matter of a dialectical turn with which Breton is familiar: as Nadja announced Suzanne, in turn the poem dedicated to Suzanne coincides with Élisa's announcing visit to Paris. At this rate, the poem of Suzanne's sensual and glorious body would contain in germ all the beauties of women to be loved – Marcelle, Jacqueline and Élisa.

Fifth lesson. The general interpretation given by Béhar to the dedications he has collected is far from adequate. Let us recall that potlatch, according to Marcel Mauss, is an ostentatious ceremony, during which the wealth accumulated by a tribe is shared and consumed with a rival tribe, which in turn taking up the challenge will accumulate even more sumptuous goods, and so on; it's a matter of who will acquire the most prestige in an accumulation destined for pure expenditure. Potlatch is a "total social phenomenon", festive and collective, which expresses itself in broad daylight. It is no more adaptable to printed dedications involving individualities than to autograph dedications which rather belong to a secret and intimate ceremony.

Sixth lesson. We must congratulate Henri Béhar for the brief and topical notices devoted to the 458 authors or recipients of autograph dedications. To all these people, we should add André Cresson, André Breton's philosophy professor, who has been wrongly presented as an anti-Hegelian. In an unpublished letter of January 4, 1932, Cresson thanks Breton for having sent him The Communicating Vessels: "Not only do you not 'despair' me. But I read you with much interest and amusement. What you say about dreams seems to me full of suggestions whose psychological value is incontestable. And the analysis of your action in a sort of half-awake dream seems to me very true. / Only, there is one thing that astonishes me in you. I understand that bourgeois society disgusts you. It disgusts me too. But what I don't understand is the love you manifest for the communist regime. That one be libertarian, anarchist, individualist to excess, that, not only does not frighten me, but seems to me quite sympathetic. [...] I represent the communist organization as the worst of the prisons that humanity could dream of."

Henri Béhar's work is a sum, which required constancy and perseverance. Every lover of André Breton, every connoisseur of surrealism, must acquire it.

May 2020

1 See Georges Sebbag, André Breton Mad Love / Suzanne Nadja Lise Simone, Jean-Michel Place, 2004, p. 184 and p. 197-202. Read in particular Aragon's letter to Suzanne Muzard of November 23, 1971 and Suzanne's response of the following day, where the two correspondents agree to say that Free Union concerns exclusively Suzanne.

2 André Breton, Complete Works, II, pp. 1317-1318. José Pierre also quotes a letter to Jacqueline Lamba of September 4, 1939; his wife being in Lyons-la-Forêt, Breton asks her to tell him about "this beautiful country which is after all the one that inspired me with Free Union for you whom I did not yet know."